Coyote Blog

I hardly know what to do with this.  When this is a pressing enough gender issue to demand NOW's attention, perhaps it is time to declare victory and move on to weightier topics.

A couple of weeks ago, President Obama had members of his cabinet, as well as members of congress, including Flake, over to the White House for a game of hoops.

They were all men.

Sounds like the boys had some fun but If you ask the "Debby Downers" from women advocacy groups like the National Organization for Women, the games lack of estrogen is unacceptable.

"Relationships get built in those more informal settings," NOW President Terry O'Neill told ABC News, "and the relationships have a huge impact on the influence an individual has. We know what happens when we segregated whether it by race or whether it by gender -- you end up with 1st class citizens and you end up with 2nd class citizens."

Fortunately we have moved beyond quotas.  Not.

"It's extremely important, now especially, for the president to have as many women as men in his closest circle of advisors. ... If women had been at the heads of the companies on Wall Street instead of these masters of the universe then we might not be in the predicament that we're in today," O'Neill says. "[The ratio of women to men] needs to be 50/50. Women are 52 percent of the voting public so obviously there needs to be 50/50 of any Cabinet."

I will be counting the men at the next baby shower.